About Rhiannan Roe

What I Do

Everyone at our eclectic, brain-loving organization wears a few different hats. Currently, my days are mostly focused around chatting to members of the Smart Drug Smarts community and growing and maintaining our sister site Axon Labs.

My Unexpected Introduction to Nootropics

I am not a morning person.

I never have been. Unfortunately for me though (and anyone similar to me who has hopes of being a fully-functioning member of society), alarm-clock-aversion isn’t really socially acceptable. In humans, “nocturnality” is just classified as “insomnia” – and it’s generally frowned upon to just not get out of bed.

But I really hate mornings, so, change was in order.

The first change was surprisingly an easy one: I started using my naturally late waking hours as productively as possible. It was – hands down – the best lifestyle shift I’ve ever made. There’s something incredibly calming and reassuring about getting all your daily “musts” crossed off the list at 3am, when everyone else is sleeping, and waking up the next day knowing that your wide-eyed hours weren’t wasted.

The second change was slightly more convoluted and involved a few firm pushes from several medical professionals…

Several sleep studies and a glowing, ET-phone-home finger-probe later*, I was prescribed modafinil (which, where I’m from, is sold under the name Alertec) to help me function as a real-live human during the day. I’d love to say that’s when I realized my untapped potential, never slept again – day or night – and used all my extra time to invent something ultra-useful that you and everyone else now own six of. But, no… Instead, I – a teenager at the time, extremely unversed in the world of cognitive enhancement – promptly refuted the suggestion, crumpled up the prescription, and, very maturely, stomped out of the building.

So, I started drinking coffee.

Black and White

I think extremes are most aptly used to define the outer limits of what’s possible so that an informed decision of what’s advisable can be made. One of the big reasons I was drawn to working at Smart Drug Smarts was its inclusion of hugely varied – and sometimes polarizing – opinions. By delving into the far-reaching corners of neuroscience and brain enhancement, we’re building a breadth of knowledge that just wouldn’t be possible if we aimed straight down the middle from the get-go.

I do everything I can to ensure my neurons are firing when I want them to, which means coffee is now only part of my cognition-cocktail… But my unusual internal clock still means that I let my brain activity dictate when I work and when I rest, so it’s best to find a natural balance between the two.

Fortunately for me, working at Smart Drug Smarts means that’s actually encouraged. And furthermore means that, as a group, we’ve finally achieved what one of us alone could not…

Collectively… we never sleep!

* Anyone who’s ever been to a sleep clinic: you know what I’m talking about.